August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
The Kings’ 2025-26 season promised a fresh start. It delivered a collapse instead. Sacramento entered the year with a new voice on the bench and a retooled backcourt. There was real hope that three straight years of disappointment were finally behind them. By April, the Kings had posted a 22-60 record. They had also suffered the longest losing streak in franchise history. Their injury list grew to include three of their most important players. What was meant to be a step forward became one of the darkest chapters in modern Kings basketball.
Doug Christie’s promotion carried weight beyond a simple coaching hire. He had steadied the Kings as interim coach during the second half of the 2024-25 season. That stretch run guided a fractured roster into the Play-In Tournament. It earned Christie enough trust from ownership to shed the interim label. On May 1, 2025, the Kings made it official, naming him their full-time head coach. He inherited the task of building a new identity. That identity had to form around DeMar DeRozan, Domantas Sabonis, and a backcourt still adjusting to life after De’Aaron Fox. The locker room needed stability. Christie’s first year in charge would test every bit of patience the front office had shown him.
The Fox trade from February 2025 still shaped the offseason. Sacramento no longer had its franchise point guard. Replacing that production meant rebuilding the backcourt from several directions at once. The Kings’ 2025-26 season would ultimately hinge on how well those new pieces fit together.
Perry moved quickly. Zach LaVine, acquired in the Fox deal, was installed as a lead scoring option. The front office then added two more experienced ball handlers around him. Dennis Schröder arrived via sign-and-trade on July 7, 2025. He gave Christie a steady veteran hand to run the offense. Weeks later, Sacramento signed nine-time All-Star Russell Westbrook. He was a low-cost, high-energy addition who still carried playoff pedigree. His role, though, had clearly diminished from his prime. The frontcourt shuffled too. The Kings sent Jonas Valančiūnas to Denver in exchange for Dario Šarić, a stretch big meant to add spacing next to Sabonis.
Sacramento entered the 2025 draft with limited capital after years of aggressive trading. The picks it did have still mattered. On June 25, 2025, the Kings dealt a protected first-round pick to Oklahoma City to move up in the second round. That trade let them acquire the draft rights to Nique Clifford, an athletic wing out of Colorado State. With the 42nd overall selection, Sacramento landed Stanford center Maxime Raynaud. That pick would pay far more immediate dividends than anyone expected. Injuries opened the door, and Raynaud walked through it.
Optimism lasted about as long as October. The Kings stumbled out of the gate. They never found the footing that preseason expectations had promised. The losses compounded into something historic. The Kings’ 2025-26 season quickly turned into a story about survival rather than progress.
Nothing captured the season’s unraveling like the stretch that swallowed January and bled into February. The Kings dropped sixteen consecutive games during that span, the longest losing streak in franchise history. By the time it ended, any illusion of contention was gone. A February 7 loss to Cleveland confirmed the Kings would fail to match their 40-42 mark from the year before. That defeat made Sacramento the first team in the league to lock in a guaranteed losing record for the season. The skid exposed how thin the roster had become without its stars. It forced Christie to lean on unproven players just to fill out a working rotation.
Sacramento tried to answer the freefall at the deadline. The fix arrived too late to matter. On February 1, 2026, the Kings moved Schröder and Keon Ellis to Cleveland in a three-team deal. In return, Sacramento brought back DeAndre Hunter, a versatile wing who briefly looked like a building block for the future. That hope evaporated almost immediately. Hunter suffered a season-ending injury that sidelined him for the rest of the year. He joined Sabonis and LaVine on a growing list of Kings who would not finish what they started. With three key contributors watching from the sideline, Sacramento had no answer left. The Kings were eliminated from playoff contention for the third consecutive season following a March 11 loss to Charlotte. That defeat made official what the standings had suggested for months.
Even in a lost season, individual performances carried real weight beyond the box score. DeRozan shouldered the scoring load from start to finish. He strung together a run of thirty-plus-point outings, including a 41-point night against Utah. He added a 39-point performance in the loss that ended Sacramento’s playoff hopes. LaVine was every bit as productive before his season ended early. He paired efficient shooting with the scoring punch the Kings had hoped for when they acquired him. Sabonis, limited to a fraction of the schedule by injury, still produced elite numbers. He did so whenever he was healthy enough to take the floor.
The newcomers offered the most encouraging development of all. Raynaud grew into a legitimate frontcourt weapon as the year wore on. He flashed scoring touch and rebounding range well beyond his draft slot. Precious Achiuwa delivered a string of double-digit rebounding nights down the stretch. He gave Christie a physical presence on a roster that badly needed one. Rookie guard Devin Carter closed the season with a 29-point outburst against Golden State. It hinted at a brighter future. Could those late-season flashes translate into sustained improvement? That question will shadow the Kings’ offseason planning.
Sacramento closed the year at 22-60, tied for the worst mark in the Western Conference. It was the franchise’s first 60-loss season since 2008-09. The Kings finished fifth in the Pacific Division and fourteenth in the West. That placement was nowhere near the Play-In picture they had reached the previous spring. For a fan base that waited nearly two decades for sustained relevance earlier in the 2020s, the Kings’ 2025-26 season felt like a step backward. It was not the bridge forward anyone in Sacramento had hoped for.
Christie’s first full season as head coach ended with more questions than answers. The front office now faces the task of deciding which pieces from this collapse are worth building around. The losing streak, the injuries, and the trade-deadline gamble on Hunter all became part of one difficult season. Sacramento will remember it as a low point that shapes the franchise’s next chapter. Whether Raynaud, Carter, and Clifford can grow into the foundation of a turnaround remains the lasting storyline to watch. The Kings now try to move past one of the most difficult years in franchise history.
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